Journal

Since Rolling Stone has asked us what Van Halen album is the best, I have an excuse to opine on this. I have heard most of their songs but I am sure there might be one here or there that I have not. In any case, although Van Hagar had many great and very worthy hits, Sammy just would never be able to pull off songs like Beautiful Girls and Hot For Teacher, the way Diamond Dave does so naturally.

So I go back over the pre-Sammy albums and do a knee-jerk reaction to quickly throw out 1984 because of my general disdain for Jump. I'll admit that I would like to spend some more time with Fair Warning and give it one more chance but it never really clicked with me. Then going over the other albums, they look pretty good. VH1?...hmmm....yes. A good candidate. VH2?...oh yes, it has Beautiful Girls. Diver Down?...another great one. But circling back to 1984 I find that if Jump had never been made the rest of the album works together so well with so many solid tracks that it is ironically my pick for their best album. …

Today we celebrate the birth of the savior of the electric guitar, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen. Van Halen was born on January 26th 1955 in Nijmegen Netherlands to Jan and Eugina Van Halen. Eddie was 12 when he picked up his older brother Alex's guitar and well, never really looked back. Ed never learned to read music, instead he honed his skills by near non stop playing and learning to play Clapton tunes by ear when they came on the radio.

Eventually of course Ed and Al would find a pint sized, Jack Daniels powered dynamo of a bass player named Michael Anthony and a wild maned, high flying, sexually ambiguous, ideal rock and roll frontman named David Lee Roth and Van Halen was born. The quartet released six high octane rock records and became one of the biggest bands in the world at the time. Roth's ego and Ed's insanity would rip them apart in 1984, but VH was saved by a new friend and partner in established solo artist Sammy Hagar. …

Heh, now this was a musical blind date having not heard a peep from either band before but sometimes you just gotta go walk that plank...

The Crave were first up (or at least the first band to these ears...) and they seem to defy all conventions with their bluesy amalgam of rock & pop. They look like they should be playing something louder and dirtier and to be fair, there are times when the songs and the volume synch and you find your grin gland getting the equivalent of a slap with a large, wet haddock and you can't help but join in the fun. They have got the songs alright, but I feel they need to be corrupted a little by the dark side for it all to snap into sharp focus. Talking of which...

Hot Leg - and yes JH has taken the best excesses of the Darkness and cranked them up a little more. Hitting the stage in a whirl wind of leopard skin, head bands and big hair the band ripped through an extended set that, (apart from the Erection Section *) never let the rock stop rolling. …

Recently I saw a small program aired on VH1 called something along the lines of the "100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs". Needless to say, as expected, their list was awful. I seriously threw up in my mouth after I finished watching the program. Witness the atrociousness for yourself with the below link:The entire VH1 list can be found here. My main problem with the list was Welcome to the Jungle hailing the #1 spot, and Def Leppard as well as Twisted Sister netting top 10 spots on the countdown. Absolutely embarrassing. Anyways VH1 made me so angry that I decided to make an ACTUAL top 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs. You'll notice that my criteria of "hard rock" is very broad.